RTJ4
| Run the Jewels
RTJ4
RTJ4 is the fourth studio album by American hip hop duo Run the Jewels. It was released digitally through their own Jewel Runners imprint via BMG Rights Management on June 3, 2020, two days earlier than scheduled, with physical editions slated for release in September 2020. As with their previous albums, a download of the album is available for free through their website, with the option of paying for it via other digital providers. The album features guest appearances from Greg Nice, DJ Premier, 2 Chainz, Pharrell Williams, Mavis Staples, Josh Homme, and frequent collaborator Zack de la Rocha. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
On their fourth installment, Killer Mike and El-P are back to tune up the ruling class and the racist police state, this time streamlining the process and settling into their most natural rhythm.
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Rolling Stone
The agit-rap duo’s fourth LP was recorded before America was ignited in protest, but it still feels perfectly apt for 2020 America.
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All Music
Trim with no filler, this fourth set from the outspoken duo provides relevant history lessons that are more useful than a classroom textbook. Rousing and lyrically dexterous, Killer Mike and El-P deliver their densest collection yet, balancing clever bon mots with tongue-twisting screeds decrying police brutality, systemic racism, class injustice, and a litany of other ills plaguing the nation.
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The Line of Best Fit
RTJ4 is Killer Mike & El-P’s masterstroke. This is musical evolution for moral, social and political revolution, the group now creating anthems in the pursuit of tolerance, respect and unity.
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NME
A modern protest classic and their best work yet.
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Beats Per Minute
It’s the soundtrack to every state and every country’s protests, thus solidifying it as another time capsule of 2020.
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Loud and Quiet
The album’s delivery oozes defiance, its widescreen beats knocking you for six while letting you know exactly how it is. Production standouts include the woozy piano of ‘ooh la la’ and the hacked-up vocal stabs of ‘out of sight’, traditional hip-hop tropes maxed out for a contemporary ear.
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Kill Your Stereo
All in all, I find this to be my favourite album from Run the Jewels so far. The lyrics touch on important, contemporary politics without ever feeling preachy or overwrought, while the more braggadocious content still manages to be fun, if maybe not exactly original.
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Rap Reviews
Because of the themes it addresses, “RTJ4” is indeed a hip-hop album chaotically reflective of the modern times and much needed for the same reason.
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musicOMH
Killer Mike and El-P have been speaking out about the deep rot at the core of the USA for their whole careers, and with this album they add several more tunes to a rich canon of protest music that will galvanise an oppositional movement.
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Sputnik Music
Run The Jewels is now a global phenomenon, and the soundtrack to some seriously uncertain times. Importantly, even in my isolated, inebriated, paranoid, vulnerable state, this album provides a cathartic and exhilarating escape from the overbearing madness of a strange fucking year.
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Louder than War
RTJ4 is a visceral album pulsing with anger and energy; the world is on fire but thankfully so are Run the Jewels. The duo felt important when they dropped their debut album in 2013, now they feel utterly essential.
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Diandra Reviews it All
I REALLY love that they made this bombastic record free. We need RTJ4.
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Stereogum
Their music tends to feel timely because the issues they’re getting at are timeless. It tends to feel empowering because these guys are extremely fucking good at getting their listeners fired up. Dismiss it as grandstanding if you must, but there is great value in music that inputs despair and outputs determination.
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DJ Booth
Politically and musically, Run the Jewels are done asking for favors. RTJ4 is five-finger discount rap at its finest.
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Vulture
Run the Jewels 4 Is Exactly What America Needs to Hear Right Now.
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mxdwn
At a time like this, where the world is in need of someone to speak the words people can’t say for themselves, RTJ4 provides people with such help. While fans do have to wait until September for physical releases, the LP is so enthralling that the wait time will seem obsolete and copies will be in their hands before they know it.
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Magnetic Magazine
The new album was meant for this time. They didn’t record this in the past week, but the themes of racial injustice and police brutality aren’t new. And that is the point.
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Slant Magazine
Structurally inventive, lyrically deft, passionate and heartbroken, RTJ4 positions Run the Jewels as the laureates of our collapsing era.
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Spill Magazine
The dynamic duo that is Killer Mike and El-P remains fierce and sharp as they usher an old-school hip hop vibe into the future with an album that already feels essential to the genre’s cannon and has a certain quality that already feels like a classic. Run The Jewels proves to be undeniable and timeless on RTJ4, a record that should break the band from cult favourites to hip hop heroes as they set the bar of the genre for the coming decade.
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The Student Playlist
Arriving at a point of revolution and upheaval, ‘RTJ4’ transforms Run The Jewels from rowdy rascals to spiritual soldiers.
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Redbrick Music
In possibly their best work to date, Run The Jewels’ fourth LP is a powerful reflection on turbulent times, full of heavyweight features and deep cuts writes Cameron Milner.
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Sungenre
The rapper, the leader, the father, is in the majority and RTJ4 deserves to be the sonic match to light the fire.
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We Plug Good Music
if there is any album that can identify, dissect, and reflect the fury, pain, confusion, and anger that has been 2020, this is it. Run The Jewels have created a document for these troubling times that will stand forever as one of the definitive documents of this turbulent year.
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Chicago Tribune
'RTJ4' is the best collaboration between rapper Killer Mike, rapper-producer El-P.
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The Young Folks
Hence, Run the Jewels prove themselves to be a great band on RTJ4, and not just a combination of two separate talents working together. Their unity represents all that we hope for, and dream of, in the shortly upcoming new world order.
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Audioxide
A poignant album that deserves multiple listens.
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Surreal Resolution
The production has always kept that energetic vibe up to 100, and while El-P is the main producer here, there are others with him like Little Shailmar & Wilder Zoby. It’s the album that we all needed to hear right now in these turbulent times, and Killer Mike and El-P still continue to give us quality hip-hop.
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Stereoboard
‘RTJ4’ flows so well that you’ll soon lose sense of where you are. For this reason, plus the 100mph pace of the bars, the lyrical poignancy, and the plethora of samples, it’s impossible to take everything in on a few cursory listens. It’s full of tunes, and runs deep with a desire to educate.
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The Times
The return of the hip-hop duo is prescient.
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The Standard
Political, pugilistic and horribly prescient — it’s the sound of now.
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Thirstkey
Yankee And The Brave mean all the disrespect and they deliver it with punch. Foregoing the pleasantries shaped this record into the most pleasant listen I've had all year. The fact that it's at times a tough listen only adds to that overall effect.
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Mr. Hipster
this album reminds me what it is I’ve been missing for the past bunch of years in my hip hop. Brains, skills and care.
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Radio 13
RTJ4 is exactly the type of album that builds on the themes of the last two RTJ albums and is music made for the scenes we are witnessing on the news daily at the moment. It is harsh, it is honest, it is in your face, much like the great political hip hop from the 1990s golden era.
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Backseat Mafia
The songs on RTJ4 fly by, and there’s no wasted space.
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The Guardian
A remarkable hit rate.
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Medium
RTJ4 is still a quality rap album, and it once again provides listers with the voices of two commanding, strong-headed, and sympathetic people. The bars are still there, the personality is still there, and the presence of Run The Jewels is still appreciated. Killer Mike and El-P have succeeded in delivering a blunt, specific, and mostly fiery project.
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inews
A fitting soundtrack for a world in chaos — bracing, brutal and utterly uncompromising.
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Legends Will Never Die
The production is off the wall, their chemistry is unmatched at this point & the political commentary is perfect for everything that’s going in the world right now.
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The Independent
Hip-hop duo pull the pin on this explosive album.
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Underground HipHop Blog
These guys now have 4 consecutive classics together, because this did not disappoint me at all. I love how they took all the elements of their first 3 albums & fused them all together into 1 near-perfect 39 minute album.
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Variety
Offering tough, prescient words of truth to a nation in crisis, Run the Jewels deliver their greatest album yet.
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PopMatters
Run the Jewels have always had a taste for action-movie hyperbole, but as they've powered through their careers, the lines between slapstick and real have almost ceased to exist.
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Riot
RTJ4 may well be the most vital album released this year.
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DIY
'RTJ4' is by far Killer Mike and El-P's most accomplished chapter, wrought with rage but injected with a humor and wisdom that offers razor-sharp clarity and, with that, an unapologetically raw and sobering take on our times.
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Paste
Run The Jewels 4 Is the Unofficial Soundtrack of the Uprising.
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Blunt Magazine
This release is nothing less than canned heat, a lit fuse, a grenade into a previously apathetic world. Listen to RTJ4 and feel something, feel everything, then repeat.
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The Indiependent
Although the duo may not be reinventing the wheel on RTJ4 they have continued to refine and build on their sound and in doing so created their most cohesive project to date. Run The Jewels have yet to release a bad album.
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Star Tribune
Lyrically, the two seek to lay out how systems put in place yesterday — from redlining to mandatory sentencing to imbalanced access to health care — helped create the injustices we see today.
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Live4Ever
It’s the record we wanted – and at the time we needed it most.
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First Post
Just when it felt like we were short of words, Run The Jewels' Killer Mike and El-P offer us a free catalogue of protest poetry with RTJ4.
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Spectrum Culture
It’s hard to gauge the “importance” of an album as new and fresh in the mind as RTJ4, but even if the day comes when its themes won’t be socially relevant anymore, one can imagine that its power as a work of art will not dissipate over time.
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Our Culture
RTJ4 is as consistently rapturous as it is fierce, managing to stay true to its playful spirit without minimising the impact of its powerful message.
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The Fortyfive
The fourth album from the hip-hop duo is the soundtrack to 2020's unrest.
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East Side Vibes
RTJ4 really could not have come out at a better time; I hope that so many young protesters are listening to this album at night before they march the next day, as it gives you the perfect energy to go out and believe that you really can change the government and the world.
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The Rich Report
While there are misses on this record, they are outweighed by the political commentary and the quality of the tracks that do hit hard. If Charli XCX’s how i’m feeling now is the defining quarantine album of 2020, then RTJ4 is the defining protest and unrest record of the year. Both perfectly sum up how 2020 will be remembered.
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naijalyricszone
In their own righteous vengeance, RTJ pick up that revolutionary notion and blow the whole lie wide open. And if you can’t get down with that, collect your MAGA hat at the door.
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Bangexclusive
RTJ4 centers protest music less explicitly than RTJ3 did, but the moments when the album is most pronouncedly in active revolt are still when it feels most essential.
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Clash Magazine
A phenomenal, potent, and timely return...
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HipHop Golden Age
RTJ4 is a confirmation – at this point, we can start calling Run The Jewels one of the best and most impactful duos in Hip Hop history. Four phenomenal albums in a row, it’s undeniable. Throw in Killer Mike and El-P’s respective solo work and they’re all-timers.
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Cameroon Magazine
Above all, “RTJ4” is a triumph of all sorts of unexpected syntheses, seamlessly uniting disparate moods, styles and eras.
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The Cultured Nerd
I feel strongly that Run The Jewels have released a landmark album that will be remembered for many years to come. The replayability and societal consciousness make for an exceptional listening experience that genuinely makes you think: a challenging record for sure, both complex and accessible. Even after dozens of listens, I feel the same way. This is a true musical adventure everyone should embark on.
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Raw side HipHop
This is 40 minutes of pure filth and I mean that in a great way. Not one minute is skipable in the short but substantial opus. This is provoking in every way and you need to have it in your life.
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HipHop Hopscotch
this album is an enjoyable, incredible and slightly experimental hip hop album. It's a great showcase of technical skill, production and content - all you could ask for really.
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Brent Walther
A short but dense release. While it isn’t new, RTJ (and Killer Mike in particular) have really begun to focus lyrics on real issues. I like that, and the tracks themselves are still really listenable albeit hard to follow at times given the density of the lyrics.
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